News and Site Highlights Archives

Spring Newsletter

The latest number of the Russell Kirk Center newsletter (Spring 2015) has just been posted. It features news on the recent Edmund Burke Society conference and other recent visitors and scholars at the Kirk Center. You can download it, and past issues, here.

Jun 2015

ISI video draws on Kirk’s thought

The Intercollegiate Review has published a short video with Robert Reilly that was shot at Mecosta last summer. In it, Bob Reilly draws on Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order to explain why “America is older than you think.” The video is just two minutes long, but Bob manages to give a thoughtful introduction to three of the four cities: Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.

Apr 2015

Birzer on Kirk

An interview with Brad Birzer, incumbent of the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in History at Hillsdale College, is the feature article in the most recent issue of Religion and Liberty from the Acton Institute. Birzer discusses his new biography, Russell Kirk: A Conservative Life, due out in the fall of 2015 from the University Press of Kentucky, in which he focuses on Kirk’s intellectual development. You can read the extensive interview at this link.

Mar 2015

Lubbers on the Liberal Arts

Listen or read here as Arend D. Lubbers, Grand Valley State University President Emeritus and longest serving college president in the country, speaks on the importance of a liberal arts education. President Lubbers has been a longtime friend of the Kirk family and The Russell Kirk Center. At GVSU, he arranged for Russell Kirk to be a visiting professor, deliver a commencement address and to receive an honorary degree.

Mar 2015

Our Second Bookman e-Book!

We are pleased to announce the release of The University Bookman on Edmund Burke, now available for Kindle. Collecting 21 reviews, essays, and interviews from the Bookman on the life and thought of Edmund Burke, this book is only $2.99, and purchases support our ongoing work to provide an imaginative defense of the Permanent Things.

Congratulations, Caleb!

Congratulations to Bookman contributor Caleb Stegall, who was selected for a seat on the Kansas Supreme Court. We wish him all the best.

Dec 2014

Kirk in the Clarion Review

Russell Kirk’s autobiographical essay, “Is Life Worth Living” is featured in The Clarion Review this month.

Dec 2014

Third Burke Conference Announced!

The Edmund Burke Society of America is pleased to announce a call for papers and open registration for “Edmund Burke and Patriotism,” their third conference on Edmund Burke. It will be held on February 27 and 28, 2015 at Villanova University. Keynote addresses will be from David Bromwich, Michael Brown, and Regina Janes. Please see this link for details and to register.

Aug 2014

Spring Permanent Things

The Spring 2014 number of our Permanent Things newsletter is up, featuring updates on recent events commemorating Russell Kirk and the strong reception in Brazil of the publication of The Politics of Prudence. You can download a copy of the PDF from this link.

The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as dogs do. It is the strange faculty—inexplicable if men are assumed to have an animal nature only—of discerning greatness, justice, and order, beyond the bars of appetite and self-interest.